WHAT IT MEANS 53 



not have become of them, had they had good training 

 and environment. 



Fortunately for the cause of science, the Kallikak 

 family, in the persons of Martin Kallikak Jr. and his 

 descendants, are not open to this argument. They 

 were feeble-minded, and no amount of education or 

 good environment can change a feeble-minded individual 

 into a normal one, any more than it can change a red- 

 haired stock into a black-haired stock. The striking 

 fact of the enormous proportion of feeble-minded in- 

 dividuals in the descendants of Martin Kallikak Jr. 

 and the total absence of such in the descendants of his 

 half brothers and sisters is conclusive on this point. 

 Clearly it was not environment that has made that 

 good family. They made their environment ; and their 

 own good blood, with the good blood in the families 

 into which they married, told. 



So far as the Jukes family is concerned, there is 

 nothing that proves the hereditary character of any of 

 the crime, pauperism, or prostitution that was found. 

 The most that one can say is that if such a family is 

 allowed to go on and develop in its own way unmolested, 

 it is pretty certain not to improve, but rather to propa- 

 gate its own kind and fill the world with degenerates 

 of one form or another. The formerly much discussed 



